Chapter Thirty-Five

 

 

 

It was a waking nightmare for Ryan.

 

The one person in his entire life that he had truly loved, the woman that he'd given his heart to, was coming at him, spitting abuse, thrusting toward him with a carving blade in her right hand. Her mouth was curled in psychotic hatred, her beautiful eyes narrowed in vicious rage, her whole face distorted by murderous madness.

 

He had the SIG-Sauer in his hand, and it would have been the work of a moment to level it at Krysty and blow her head from her shoulders.

 

But his finger froze on the trigger, paralyzed by total blind disbelief.

 

He even tried to call out to her, but his tongue cleaved to the roof of his mouth and he couldn't make a sound.

 

Ryan had always known since he was a young boy that death comes calling for all men.

 

Now it had come for him.

 

Ladrow Buford made his move.

 

With Krysty right on top of him, he thrust out his hand in front of her, like a predark traffic cop.

 

"No!" he roared, his voice suddenly sounding amazingly deep and powerful.

 

He might as well have tried to pick a sec lock with a piece of wet string.

 

Thwarted by finding the little middle-aged man in her way, Krysty stabbed at him. The point of the knife struck him in the center of his right cheek, slicing down, hacking off a neat section of his face, exposing the pearly whiteness of teeth in the gum beneath, until the silent wave of crimson came washing down to obscure them.

 

Buford's crystal-shattering scream was the catalyst that sparked chaos.

 

Krysty stabbed again and again, cutting the white-coat's face apart, ripping flesh away, carving the end off his nose, lunging and popping one eye neatly out of its socket. Buford was unrecognizable, his features ripped apart like a ruined carnival mask, sodden in spurting, gouting blood.

 

She was now shrieking at the top of her voice, like an enraged harpy. "You next, Ryan, you dead-meat bastard!"

 

And still he wasn't able to pull the trigger on the SIG- Sauer, wasn't able to blow the madwoman away.

 

Buford had sunk to his knees, his cries for help and mercy drowned in his own blood.

 

But the chaos didn't end there with the savage butchery of the scientist.

 

It began there.

 

The three sec men, lying prone under the threat of Trader's Armalite, noticed that the red-haired woman's attack on the whitecoat had distracted everyone. Even Trader, the survivor of a thousand firefights, had been taken aback by Krysty's insane behavior and lost his combat concentration.

 

So they made their play.

 

The large room was a bedlam of screaming. Crichton had taken his own chance to ring the emergency bellpull, summoning more sec men to help. Dean shouted to his father to run away from Krysty. Mildred yelled at her friend to stop the slaughter. Jak had spotted the blasters on the table and was moving to regain his own Colt Python, J.B. at his heels. Doc stood with his Le Mat in his hand, eyes staring in disbelief at what was happening. Abe had been walking toward Trader when Krysty had started her crazed attack, and now be was frozen, halfway across the floor.

 

There was the sickening sound of the knife still hacking away at the dying whitecoat, the point grating on the planes of bone around the eyes, cutting the lips to ragged tatters of crimson flesh. Buford's hands were also destroyed as he'd tried to fend off the merciless strokes of the gleaming knife, two of his fingers completely severed.

 

Ryan had backed away several steps, the SIG-Sauer pointing uselessly at his woman.

 

The three sec men were all up on their hands and knees, one of them clutching at Trader, trying to bring him down and grab his blaster.

 

It seemed to break the spell.

 

Ryan spun and fired quickly, seeing one of the guards go down, clutching at his chest. Trader had wrenched away his Armalite, using the butt to batter the second man to the floor. Jak had thrown one of his knives, miraculously backhanded, into the third sec man's neck, knocking him onto the bloodied floor.

 

Buford was finally down, death bringing him its dubious, delayed mercy. And nothing stood between Krysty and Ryan. The point of the knife in her hand was snapped off, broken against the scientist's jaw or teeth, but it was still a terminally lethal weapon.

 

"Shoot her, Trader," Dean screamed in a fragile, piping voice. "Shoot Krysty!"

 

"No," Ryan protested, but his voice was so quiet that nobody heard itexcept Krysty, who leered at him.

 

"That's right, lover," she whispered. "Just you and me."

 

At that moment the doors at either end of the room burst open.

 

Through the far door came eight or ten sec men, all holding Mossbergs, nearly falling over one another as they took in the scene of dying and death.

 

Ryan half turned to the figure who had come in through the entrance just behind him, blinking his eye in disbelief.

 

It was Krysty Wroth.

 

"Hi, lover," she said. "Get out of the way so me and that phony bitch can get to it."

 

"Chill slut, Ryan," whispered the Krysty who stood facing him.

 

Ryan hesitated, deciding for a moment that he had totally lost his mind. The two women were identical except for the fact that one had a homicidal grin pasted on her lips and was holding a bloodied blade in her hand.

 

His attention was distracted by the beginning of a short, brutal firefight. He remembered the comment about how the sec men at the Melissa Crichton Institute were efficient enough, as far as they went, but they'd never come up against murderous fighting machines like Jak, Trader and J.B., and they were hopelessly outclassed by them.

 

One of the Mossbergs roared, the charge starring out across the room, the pellets narrowly missing Abe, galvanizing him into rapid motion. He dived at the table where the others had helped themselves to their weapons, snatching up his own stainless steel Colt Python, distinguished from Jak's blaster by its four-inch barrel against the albino's six-inch barrel.

 

There followed a devastating assault by Ryan's friends, led by the vicious crack of the Armalite, overlaid by the snarling Uzi and the boom of the Le Mat, with the other handblasters all playing their part in the abattoir symphony.

 

The sec men were overwhelmed.

 

Apart from that single round from one of their Mossbergs, they never filed a shot in retaliation, being cut down where they stood, their bodies dancing and whirling as the bullets tore them apart in fountains of thick blood.

 

The stillness was frighteningly loud in the big room, scented with cordite and death.

 

Ryan had personally taken out two of the hapless guards with his SIG-Sauer, but now he turned back to face the twin figures of Krysty Wroth, one vengeful, one avenging.

 

"Don't anyone shoot her," called the Krysty who stood close to the nearer door into the bedroom.

 

The Krysty who was much nearer to Ryan hadn't moved since the shooting began, as if the noise and dying had somehow disorientated her.

 

Now she shuddered as though an invisible life force had been injected into her. Her green eyes came back into focus, staring this time past Ryan, past him at the doppelganger standing a few steps beyond.

 

"Yes. That's right, that's right. Chill the twin, first among equals."

 

"Move your ass, lover," said the other Krysty. "Rest of you cover the doors in case we get more company."

 

Ryan took a few cautious paces to his left, toward where Trader was already hurriedly levering more 9 mm shells into the Armalite. He had only the barest idea of what was going on, but logic told him that one of the two women had to be the real Krysty and the other was some kind of genetically engineered false copy.

 

Common sense said that the murderous Krysty had to be the imitation.

 

Everyone was watching the bizarre duel, including Professor Crichton, who was sitting up on his bed, hands to his chest, breathing hard, having miraculously avoided being hit by any of the hail of full-metal-jacketed death.

 

The first Krysty, with the knife, had backed away a little, glancing down at the lake of blood that lay across half the floor, careful not to slip in it.

 

The second Krysty, unarmed, was advancing, smiling, arms out wide, like a wrestler.

 

Dean had sidled around to stand by his father, reaching up to take his hand for reassurance. "Which one's the real Krysty, Dad?" he breathed.

 

"Don't know. Don't know what's going on at all."

 

Doc was near them, and be whispered a quick explanation of what they'd already found outabout the two Ellisons, the identical dogs and the failed experiments resulting from altering DNA.

 

"No good ever came from tampering with Nature and trying to emulate the Almighty," he said. "I think that the notorious Dr. Robert Oppenheimerthe destroyer of worldswould be the first to confirm that. Were he still alive."

 

Ryan had never heard of the man, but he nodded anyway, his gaze fixed to the fight.

 

"Come on, Krysty," Mildred called encouragingly.

 

Both the redheaded, green-eyed women turned toward her, smiling.

 

They closed on each other, and the unarmed Krysty grabbed at the wrist of the armed double, keeping the knife away from herself. But, from then on, the fight was seriously weird. Every move one would make, the other would instantly counter, like a pair of mirror images locked in identical combat.

 

It was as if each knew precisely what was in the other's mind and was preparing to counter it before the initial action had even begun.

 

For several seconds they stood locked together, straining like statues. The Krysty with the knife spit at her twin, but the other woman turned her face away and the saliva pattered harmlessly into the lake of blood.

 

Ryan realized that the twin had all of Krysty's memories and thoughts typed into its own brain, so that it knew everything that its original had ever done and was tuned in to anything that she might attempt.

 

"Help me, Ryan, lover," called the first of the Krystysor was it the second one? They'd been spinning and staggering around, boots sliding in the blood, so that it wasn't possible to figure which was which. "Cut the slut's throat, lover."

 

Ryan knew that Krysty almost never used bad language.

 

He drew his panga and started to move in, ready to slit open the neck of the speaker.

 

But the other Krysty called for him to stop. "I told you, she's mine!"

 

There was a convulsive jerk as the two women wrestled close together, a gasp of pain and shock, and then they parted.

 

One had the knife buried in her chest up to the hilt, blood trickling down from the cut in the white shirt.

 

The other stepped back, panting with the effort of the fight, watching her rival, her other self, drop to her knees, dying.

 

"Krysty?" Ryan said doubtfully. "You all right?"

 

"Sure, lover. I worked it out. Wasn't a stalemate like it looked. They used a mat-trans unit to clone me instantly. But this poor bitch was only a kind of first-generation copy of me. They programmed her by tweaking molecules or neurons or something to make her hate you. It was the last test. She could only react to what she thought I was doing. So, I positively decided to pull at the knife, then I pushed it instead. She just wasn't quite quick enough to react."

 

The twin rolled onto her side, hair matted in the coagulating crimson pool. Her eyes closed and she died, silently.

 

"Sorry for her," Krysty said, "in a way."

 

"How did you escape?" Mildred asked.

 

"Easy. Big alarm about some killing going on. Left me with only one sec man. I kicked him in the groin and sent his balls into the back of his throat. Came here."

 

Ryan moved to hug her, feeling the tension in her body as be clasped her tight. "Good to have you back safe, lover," he said.

 

"You, too. Reckon we should get our asses in gear, out of this place. Wish we had some plas-ex to blow the heart out of it. Seriously evil things going on."

 

J.B. grinned, holding up two grens. "Got these babies and four more beside. Enough to start some real damage."

 

"Lab's next door," Mildred said.

 

"Look, Dad," Dean called from the side of the king-size bed.

 

Professor David Crichton, grandson of the founder, the mastermind behind everything that had gone on in the institute, was dead.

 

The last few minutes of violence and savage slaughter had been too much for his weak heart and he had simply fallen back on his pillows, lips pulled back off his yellow teeth, eyes staring into infinity.

 

"Don't weep for him," Krysty said.

 

"Wasn't going to." Jak grinned.

 

 

 

THE REST WAS MAINLY downhill and easy.

 

With all of the friends together and all fully armed, it was simple to split their force, with J.B. taking Abe and Jak into the vast laboratory next door, with their six grenades. They picked the main targets, including the pair of mat-trans chambers, using the delays to give themselves time to get out and close the doors, avoiding any danger.

 

Ryan spread out the others into a tight perimeter, covering themselves against any putative sec man attack from any direction.

 

But there was no direct threat.

 

Ryan was watching along a main passage that ended up in the central concourse. Twice be saw guards appear in the distance, then vanish quickly. There was no way they could know that their chief was dead, along with Buford and a dozen of their fellows. But it looked like fear alone was enough to keep them well away from the cold-blooded outlanders.

 

He heard movement and glanced around, seeing Jak moving toward him. The albino crouched, giving a thumbs-up signal. J.B. was at his shoulder, showing Ryan the two-minute warning for the grens.

 

When the explosion came it was surprisingly muted, but it still blew out windows and doors all through that section of the research wing.

 

Ryan could smell the fire from the burners, seeing thick black chemical smoke already starting to billow out into the rest of the complex.

 

"Let's go, people!" he shouted.

 

 

 

THEY ESCAPED through the damaged window near the cells, out into a cold, gray day. The snow lay packed and deep, but it had a frozen crust and walking wasn't difficult.

 

It took them less than twenty unchallenged minutes to make their way around the outside of the institute and up toward the guarded sec barrier on the hillside at the neck of the valley. Ryan had anticipated trouble there, but the five or six sec men came out, hands high, weaponless.

 

"We saw what happened down there," said the oldest of them, pointing to the pall of smoke that hung over the white-walled building. Flames were already glowing through the roof, and a number of figures could be seen filing out of the destruction. "We got no quarrel no more with you."

 

"That's good," Ryan said. "You best go and join the others."

 

As soon as the sec men were on their way, he led the friends down the far side of the steep blacktop, on their way toward the redoubt.

 

 

 

DOC HAD BEEN in high spirits as they picked their path through the wintry landscape toward the redoubt, singing snatches from old half-remembered Christmas carols. Now that they were about to make the next jump, his good nature had abandoned him once more.

 

"I wish that we could simply make our way around this blighted country as God intended. We have seen in the last few days the sorry results of man setting himself over Nature. By the three Kennedys, but I would be a happier man if these matter transmitters had never been invented and Overproject Whisper had died along with the malignant brains that invented it."

 

"Come on, Doc," Krysty said. "Think of the excitement of never knowing where you're going to end up."

 

He patted her on the shoulder. "Better to travel hopefully, than to arrive, my dearest lady? We shall see."

 

They all eventually walked through the control room and into the gateway chamber itself, with its dark gray armaglass walls. Krysty shuddered as she sat between Dean and Mildred, leaving a space beside her for Ryan to occupy, after he'd closed the outer door and triggered the jump mechanism.

 

"Hope we don't all end up getting cloned," she said.

 

Mildred laughed, easing the tension. "I'm with you on that. Even one Doc Tanner's one too many."

 

Before the old man could reply, Ryan was with them, the door firmly shut.

 

He sat, feeling the familiar swirling in his brain, like feathery, exploring fingers. The disks in floor and ceiling began to glow, and the white mist appeared in the chamber.

 

He reached and clasped Krysty's hand in his, feeling the warmth and reassurance of her touch.

 

Ryan closed his eye and entered the darkness.